


dreamed in red

by Frostandcoal



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-12-13 02:56:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11750601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frostandcoal/pseuds/Frostandcoal
Summary: Four times the nightmares don’t win, and one time they almost do. Post-canon.





	dreamed in red

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to metaphoricallytheworst for being lovely and offering to beta this for me. It is so appreciated! 
> 
> TW for canon references to descriptions of torture, references of past sexual abuse and brief mentions self-harm. If you would like more specifics, please let me know and I'll happily give more details. 
> 
> Title from my most favorite band in the world, Murder by Death, and the song of the same name.

i. concrete

They are in Columbia, a few weeks after the Foxes win at Edgar Allan. By all rights, Neil’s dreams should be triumphant, victorious, sweet-flavored things -- last-second buzzer shots, hot, drugging kisses and the sight of someone else’s blood that meant he was free _._

But Neil is contrariness down to his bones, and the dreams he has are not the dreams he wants.

***

_“Lola,” his father says, “Would you like the pleasure of crippling him?”_

_Lola’s smile, her voice tense with sadistic excitement. “Can I?”_

That conversation is Objective. It is Truth.

What happens next is neither.

_His father is holding him down. Lola is tracing the knife up his calf, telling him how badly it will hurt when she cuts, telling him how even if he were to survive his life would be over because there is no coming back from this._

_Nathaniel weeps on the floor, begging, fighting, trying to run._

_“This is the way it should have ended,” says Nathan._

_Lola laughs, and starts to cut._

***

Neil wakes up in agony. Things only get worse from there.

He recognizes dimly that he is in Columbia, not in a basement. His hamstring isn’t a mess of sliced tendons and blood; the pain that woke him is a Charlie horse in his right calf.

Andrew has a knife at his throat.

Neil’s adrenaline is through the roof, his heart pounding and his breath uneven. He’s on his back but he hadn’t been sleeping that way, he never does ( _too easy to wake up with your throat slit_ ). He’d been on his side, facing the door.

His calf is throbbing but Neil barely notices, and he doesn’t even bother flexing his foot to ease the pain because he knows it is not wise to move.

It isn’t the knife at his throat that gets beneath the dream and pain; it’s the look in Andrew’s eyes. The moonlight picks out the amber so they look like they are burning. His mouth is twisted and he looks like the killer Neil knows him to be, but he also looks trapped, cornered like an animal.

He looks like Neil felt in the basement.

It isn’t that Andrew doesn’t recognize him, because he does. Andrew’s awareness is too brutal of a thing to let him escape from it, even for a moment. The look on his face is the same as the one Neil imagines his mother would have worn if she’d lived long enough to see him sign that contract with the Foxes.

Andrew looks betrayed. Neil can’t breathe.

“Get out,” Andrew snarls at him, but Neil is already moving, doing what he does best, and running.

There’s an echo of pain in his calf, and the ghost of a laugh in his head.

_This is how it should have ended._

***

Neil makes it as far as the back porch.

It is late spring which in South Carolina means it is already warm, the air too-sticky even at four in the morning. The back patio is simple and concrete, and Neil feels a chill as he sits and thinks about basement floors and _please, just let me go_ and blood and that look on Andrew’s face.

He lights a cigarette and stares at it, wondering when the familiar scent of it became associated with Andrew instead of his mother.

_Another person you betrayed,_ Nathan’s voice whispers in his ear.

Neil takes a defiant drag and exhales, imagining he is blowing smoke in his father’s face. _You are a corpse,_ he thinks, loudly, in his own voice. _I’m not listening to you._

_You weren’t so brave in the Nest,_ a different voice says, and Neil doesn’t know who that one belongs to. Riko, maybe. The only other person who’d ever heard him scream.

A few minutes later the screen door opens. Neil doesn’t look up, but he isn’t surprised that Andrew wasn’t able to go back to sleep. He isn’t surprised that Andrew followed him out here, either. Neither of them have ever been able to leave the other alone, even when they wanted to.

Andrew takes the cigarettes and lights one with a steady hand. Neil finds comfort in Andrew’s apathy like salve on a burn. He wonders if that’s fair.

“She -- they -- were going to cripple me, cut my hamstring. I was dreaming about it. I got a Charlie horse and I -- it woke me up.” It sounds so stupid when he says it out loud.

“Stop it,” Andrew says, startling him.

“I’m not doing anything,” Neil protests, his own voice weak, thin as the smoke trailing from the tips of their cigarettes.

“I know.” Andrew cuts a glance over at him. “I find your sulking insufferable.”

Neil takes a breath, too sharp.

“If you apologize to me I will end you,” Andrew says, calmly. His gaze is focused just beyond the property line, where dawn is softening the hard edges of night.

“I’m not apologizing,” Neil lies. “I wanted to tell you why I woke up like that.”

“Do you think I need you to tell me?”

Neil takes a drag of his cigarette and thinks. Andrew doesn’t waste time with questions he doesn’t want answers to. He remembers that feral, trapped expression and the heat of anger and betrayal lighting up Andrew’s eyes.

“ _I_ need to tell you,” says Neil. Andrew glances at him. His hair is longer than Neil is used to, blond strands hanging in his face. He doesn’t bother pushing them back, unconcerned as ever by his own discomfort. “I -- I’d never --”

“Shut up, Neil.” Andrew’s cut-glass eyes are cool and empty. “You’re not the only one who has nightmares.”

Neil is still unsettled, but he shuts up. A few minutes later, Andrew finishes his cigarette and climbs to his feet. Neil doesn’t watch him go back inside.

***

The dawn is hazy, dipped in grays and pinks by the time the door opens again. Andrew comes back with two mugs of coffee and sits down, close enough Neil can feel the heat of his body.

_I would never hurt you,_ Neil thinks as he takes the mug. He doesn’t say it, because it isn’t true. He has hurt Andrew ( _Thank you, you were amazing. I’m sorry. I was going to tell you._ ) and chances are he will hurt him again. _I would never hurt you on purpose_ is what he means, but the echo of his father’s voice keeps him from saying it.

Also, he doesn’t think Andrew wants to hear it.

“You need to stretch before you go to bed,” Andrew says.

Blinking, Neil looks over at him in surprise. “What?”

Andrew doesn’t repeat himself, just sips his coffee. If he’s ever offered Neil any sort of physical fitness advice other than a sarcastic _stop breathing_ , Neil can’t think of it. He carefully thinks through the tangled knots of what they are to each other, wondering if this is a string that needs to be tightened or a string that needs to be cut.

“Yeah,” Neil says. “I should. I didn’t even go for that long of a run yesterday” He flexes his foot, a slight soreness reminding him of the cramp. He’s always been terrible at remembering to stretch. All that mattered was getting somewhere else.

Andrew sighs. “I am sometimes astounded at how stupid you are.”

Neil suddenly remembers the night before, Andrew teasing him with his hands and mouth, Neil’s body bowing as he came and feet pointing hard from the pleasure of it --

“Oh,” Neil says, and thinks maybe he is blushing. This has nothing to do with running away, and everything to do with the two of them coming together.

They sit there together, silent, while the sky brightens with better things.

ii. memory

His memory is nothing but a curse.

Oh, maybe it made school less of a chore -- especially given the American educational system, which bases intelligence on rote memory and regurgitating useless facts and figures -- but that isn’t much of a comfort. It also made school _boring_ , and Andrew does not like to be bored.

His memory also makes sure all his dreams are bad, even the ones that shouldn’t be.

In this one, he is dreaming about Neil. Neil, naked in bed, falling apart for Andrew like he does so easily when Andrew touches him.

This is a dream but it is a memory, too. It is something that has happened, something that was good, something that Andrew would enjoy remembering, if he were the type to enjoy anything at all.

His memory makes certain that he won’t, and ruins this dream like it ruins everything else.

Neil is no longer moaning but thrashing, saying _please_ and Andrew isn’t stopping and it’s now an unpleasant twist of reality and imagined horrors (Neil on unforgiving concrete, bleeding, dying, begging the man who should have kept him safe) and confused associations (Andrew on the bed, face-down, biting the pillow until he tasted feathers, not begging because she might hear and she was his last chance) --

Andrew wakes up on his back, hard in his pajama pants, fingers tangled in cotton.

Neil sleeps like a corpse but he wakes up from his own nightmares with his whole body. Neil never cries out or shouts; it’s in the twitch of his limbs and his breathing and his runner’s body trying to _go._

Andrew, on the other hand, trained himself to be still. Because if he was still, maybe it would fool them into thinking he was asleep and they would leave. They never left, and Andrew was never asleep.

He blinks at the ceiling while he scans his surroundings -- Columbia, and Neil asleep next to him, all warm-limbed and easy breathing, no nightmares of his own. Andrew’s heart is racing and his cock is hard as a rock, and Andrew brutally shoves it all down -- the lust, the fear, all of it -- until he can breathe again.

Then he gets out of bed and goes into the bathroom.

He took a shower before bed, a quick one, mostly so he could get off remembering the way Neil felt under his hands, muscles supple and skin marred by all the battles he’s fought and won. The way Neil’s fingers were careful in Andrew’s hair even when he came in Andrew’s mouth. The way he always sounded so surprised that his body could be made to feel pleasure instead of pain.  

Instead, Andrew relives the memory of something that never happened.

Andrew braces his hands on the counter and stares at himself in the mirror. He looks the same as he always does, blank-eyed and calm. The disconnect of his body and his mind reverberates through him like an echo, disquieting and oddly comforting.

(Aaron, when they’d first met, had been taken aback the sight of a stranger who looked just like him. Andrew was used to it every time he looked in a mirror.)

Bee would have a field day with this but it is one of those moments when Andrew is too tired by the weight of who he is to do anything but breathe, brush his teeth, and turn on the shower.

Andrew stands beneath the water and braces his hands on the tile. The water is cold and he waits for it to do what he wants, chill his body until it is as cold as his mind, how’s that for not disassociating, _Bee._

“Andrew?”

There’s a knock at the door, because of course there is. Andrew hits his fisted hands against the tile because he is not ready for this, Neil’s voice and earnest concern. He is trying to get cold, not warm. “Go to sleep, Neil.”

“Didn’t you take a shower before bed?”

The things that come out of Neil’s mouth sometimes makes Andrew wonder if Neil is crazy. “And now I’m taking another one, you’re very observant, go to _bed_.”

He hates the way his voice sounds.

“Can I come in?”

Neil does not listen. But he always _asks_ and that is the problem, now Andrew is thinking of Neil’s warm hands and the way he says _yes_ and the noises he makes, and he’s only shivering now because he’s noticing the lack of warmth. “What part of go to sleep do you not understand?”

“The part where it’s not a no,” says Neil.

“I hate you,” Andrew whispers, head bowed, like a secret he’s whispering to the water. He turns the shower off and grabs a towel, drying his body with brisk efficiency and pulling his sweats and the t-shirt he wore to bed back on while he’s still damp. The cloth sticks to him but he doesn’t care, just yanks the door open.

“I hate you,” he says, again, so that Neil can hear.

Neil is awake, his lithe, wiry frame humming with his runner’s energy, his hair a mess as usual and pillow marks on his face. There is no number to account for the percentage he is at, standing there looking at Andrew as if he is two seconds away from saying something Andrew does not want to hear.

He came in here to freeze, goddamn it, and all this man in front of him does is make him _burn._

“Yes or no?”

Andrew blinks, because Neil is -- Neil is so _stupid,_ how can he even ask that, right now, with Andrew glaring daggers at him at three in the morning, and Andrew is still damp and shivering because that was a cold fucking shower, and --

“Yes,” he says, and shoves the towel at Neil. His hair is sopping wet and dripping water into his eyes.

Neil rubs the towel over his head. His touch is muted by the fabric, and that’s all right. He dries Andrew’s hair with the towel and then steps back, giving Andrew the space he didn’t ask for because it’s _Neil_ , goddamn it, and hands over the towel.

Andrew hangs it up, and then looks at him. They stand there, staring at each other in the harsh light of the bathroom, two people who are too broken to be with anyone but each other. The thought is not a comfort ( _that is a lie_ ). Andrew does not want any of this but it is too late, has been too late since Nathaniel Wesninski walked through a hotel room door and let Andrew push him to his knees, let Andrew decide whether or not he could stay.

Neil holds up a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Andrew shakes his head, and Neil’s eyes go wide at this unaccustomed refusal but he’s smart enough not to say anything about it for once. Andrew stomps past him and back to the bed.

Neil waits for a heartbeat, and Andrew makes an impatient sound because he is tired and he is cold from the shower and he wants to be warm, and he’s too tired to care what that means.

_Something bad,_ he thinks, and Bee’s voice immediately overlays the words like trace paper in all fucking caps saying, _no, Andrew, something good._

“Get in,” he says, and it sounds more resigned than torn, because of course it does. Neil Josten has always appreciated that Andrew’s edges are sharp as his own.  

Neil just gets in bed and lays facing Andrew, which Andrew does not want because he wants it. He reaches out to shove Neil but instead catches his fingers in Neil’s shirt and tugs, lightly. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” says Neil, thankfully not adding his usual declaration about how it’s always yes, because he must know that Andrew isn’t in the mood for – anything, he wants nothing _(and Neil is nothing_ ).

Andrew yanks him closer, not gently, and kisses him -- also not gently. Neil makes a happy sound against his mouth because Neil is -- Neil is crazy, a junkie, he has a death wish and he’s Andrew’s.

Andrew kisses him until the warmth burns the dream away and thinks, _this is not good_ but it isn’t even Bee’s voice this time that says, _yes it is_ , like new vocals laid over an instrumental track he’s tired of hearing even if he won’t admit it.

Neil flails around for a moment and Andrew bites out, ‘If you can’t be still, sleep on the floor,” but then Neil pushes something at him, a bundle of warm fabric that smells like Neil and cigarettes and all the things that will keep him from freezing.

Andrew pulls it on and finally stops shivering.

iii. names

When classes start again, Neil switches his major now that he doesn’t have to prepare for a life spent running. He settles on mathematics. His classes are challenging and it’s more than just the subject matter -- his scars garner stares even when people think he doesn’t notice, and some of his professors clearly have low expectations of him based solely on his status as a college athlete.

Neil is used to being underestimated, but he is not used to attention.

The worst is when his professor in differential equations calls him “Nathaniel.”

Neil stares so hard and for so long that the professor at least has the grace to flush, but the damage is done.

“It’s Neil,” he says, but he says it in Nathaniel’s voice and hates himself.

***

_It is the first game of the season, and Neil is jogging onto the court when he hears the announcer say, “And starting striker for the Foxes, number ten...Nathaniel Wesninski!”_

_The stadium erupts to hisses and boos, and Neil stops at the center of the court, which is covered in blood, sticky beneath his shoes._

_In front of him stand his opponents: his father, Lola, and Riko Moriyama all shrouded in Raven-black._

_Neil looks behind him but the Foxes’ goal is empty, and Neil is on the court alone._

_Riko’s racquet is a knife, Nathan’s an axe, and Lola is holding a cigarette lighter and smiling._

_“Bring me the blowtorch,” his father says, and the crowd cheers._

***

Neil wakes up in a subdued panic and hits his arm, hard, on the ceiling. He’s apparently thrown his arm up to protect himself, even if that’s never helped before. His wrists and the old scars there seem to be aching. Neil rubs them and half-expects to find blood.

Neil hates being on the top bunk simply because it takes too long to get out of it. He’s graceless and he’s sure he makes too much noise, but Kevin is asleep -- probably having a different kind of nightmare about their upcoming Exy season. Andrew’s in bed with his back against the wall, and Neil can make out the sharp edges of the book he must have been reading when he fell asleep.

Neil finds his tennis shoes in the dark and shoves his feet in without socks, then grabs his wallet and keys, and Andrew’s pack of cigarettes and lighter. He’s on his way to the door when he feels the tug on his t-shirt.

There will never be a time when Neil is not taken aback by how silently – and how _fast_ – Andrew can move when he wants to. Andrew holds up one finger in a _wait_ gesture, so Neil does, and then they leave the room together.

At the stairwell, Neil heads down to the parking lot instead of the roof. Andrew follows, silent like a shadow. Unlike his dream, Neil doesn’t need to turn around to know he’s there.

***

Sometimes Andrew won’t let him drive, depending on -- something, Neil’s not exactly sure what the criteria is that Andrew uses and he doesn’t ask. This time Andrew goes right for the passenger side so Neil unlocks the driver’s seat door and climbs in.

They are both silent as Neil takes them to the highway. He wants to drive without thinking and having to navigate roads and stoplights, and the longer they go without seeing another car, the sooner his tension will ease.

This is play-acting at running, but it works.

Andrew is wearing a hoodie despite the fact it’s September in South Carolina, which hangs on to summer with all its strength. Autumn is a fight like everything else.

“We need to stop and get more cigarettes,” says Neil.  

“You need to buy your own,” Andrew says flatly.

The car needs gas, so Neil pulls over at an all-night station. He fills the car and goes inside, buying cigarettes and a sports drink and a candy bar from the disinterested cashier. He tosses the cigarettes on the dash and the candy bar at Andrew, and opens the sports drink.

It’s not until they’re twenty minutes out of town that Neil says, “My fucking differential equations professor called me Nathaniel.”

“You were on the news,” says Andrew, pulling his hoodie over his head and settling back in his seat, folded into darkness. “Are you that surprised?”

“I had a dream the announcer called me Nathaniel Wesninski as I went on the court.” Neil glances at him. “And I was playing against my father, Lola and Riko. Alone.”

“Your subconscious is not subtle.” Andrew takes a drag on his cigarette. “Other teams are going to call you that on the court and you know it. And worse. Probably not the announcers, though.” He pauses. “Maybe the one at Edgar Allan.”

Neil doesn’t remember when he first started finding Andrew’s blunt honesty comforting, but it was probably somewhere between that night in Wymack’s living room and _a man can only have so many issues_ on the roof.

“And your father, Lola and Riko won’t call you anything because they’d dead.”

That they are. Neil drives and relaxes into the seat, letting the certainty that is Andrew’s words anchor him as much as he can stand being anchored. Neil yawns, the tiredness catching up with him at last.

All the people who could hurt him with his old name are dead. Nathaniel Wesninski is dead. “The next time someone calls me that, I just won’t answer,” he says.

Andrew makes a derisive sound. “I’d believe that, Neil, if I believed you were capable of keeping your mouth shut.”

Neil smiles in the dark. “Light me a cigarette before I start telling you about Kevin’s play ideas for our first game.”

iv. fault lines

Andrew has never been all that familiar with stability.

He grew up like an aftershock, a tremble of earth without strength or locality, a brief echo of violence in a silent landscape that was easily forgotten. His life was like a faultline from California to South Carolina, from Cass to Tilda to Nicky, and maybe it settled at Palmetto State but that was the exception, not the rule.

Still, it’s strange how used to the exception he’s become.

He signs with the Atlanta Jackrabbits after graduation, because they’ve promised to make him a starter and the only thing more boring than playing Exy is sitting on the bench and watching someone else play it. The Foxes overcame an early shaky season to once again win the NCAA Championship in Andrew’s last year, and Andrew has several teams make him the same offer all over the country.

He chose the Jackrabbits in Atlanta, and no one was stupid enough to say it was because of Neil. To him, anyway.

Andrew has an apartment and he’s surprised how much this affects him, how accustomed he’s become to sharing small spaces with other people. And not just Neil, because Andrew shares all the spaces of himself with Neil whether Neil is there or not.

He is used to Kevin’s Exy games and his vodka, Nicky’s chatter and his wet towels on the floor.  Andrew has learned to sleep in a room where the silence was often broken by footsteps, something he once thought impossible.

When Neil leaves and Andrew is alone for the first time in years in a place that is not Columbia, he lays in bed and listens to traffic and unfamiliar silence and thinks maybe this is going to be more of an adjustment than he thought.

He doesn’t miss the Foxes because he doesn’t care about them, but he’s surprised when he goes to practice and finds his new team is not comprised of individuals who can be easily slotted into the spaces Andrew assumed they would occupy. It does not make him like them, but it makes him notice them, and with that comes the knowledge that he is the thing that is different.

The thought _no one here is afraid of you_ is one that Bee would say should be affirming, positive, but Bee was always an optimist and she never did quite understand the value of a healthy dose of fear.

In hindsight it should have been less of a surprise when the dreams start, because Andrew -- while he hates to admit it – has always seen unknown quantities as a threat. None of Bee’s careful untangling has ever managed to change that.

In the dream his memory makes certain the locker room is exactly the same -- the ridiculous logo and the inspirational posters, the slick tile floor and the harsh lights, the Jackrabbit’s unfortunate red-and-brown color scheme that reminds him of blood and predators and Ravens.

His teammates are the same, too, and the silver scars on his bare arms are exactly where Andrew knows them to be, down to the very first one, an accident in which Andrew learned pain was a different animal when you inflicted it on yourself.

He wakes up staring at the ceiling and curls his fingers around the blade that isn’t there.

***

“I don’t think you’re sleeping, Minyard,” his coach says.

Andrew thinks about the dream he had last night, about how perfectly his dream was able to reconstruct the pattern of silver-gray in the coach’s mustache, and walks out without a word.

***

“Did you bring a _knife_ to practice?” His teammate, Monica, asks him one day.

_Should have brought your knife to practice,_ she sneers, later, in his dream.

***

The third time he wakes up, he calls Neil.

“Hey.” Neil’s voice is sleep-rough and soft, and it makes Andrew slowly uncurl his fingers from the knife that is in his hand, the knife that he’s kept under his pillow even though he gave that up soon after Neil started sleeping with him.

Andrew doesn’t say anything, because he doesn’t know what to say. He and Neil have suffered endless nightmares together, sloughed off the dregs of them on the roof or in Andrew’s Maserati, with gas station cigarettes and candy bars and the kind of quiet that soothes.

Andrew could go for a drive, but it isn’t --

_\--the same without Neil._

“I hate you,” Andrew says, finally, after a few minutes of listening to Neil’s breath, steady and even, on the phone. “I didn’t want you to forget.”

Neil has to know why he’s calling, because Neil knows all of him, the scars and places where knives should and shouldn’t be. “I know.” Then he asks Andrew about a hypothetical escape route should the zombies show up in Atlanta, a conversation which engages his brain for only a short period of time, but as it happens, it’s enough.

He falls asleep dreaming about escape plans and Neil Josten by his side, fierce and mouthy enough to annoy even the undead.

***

The next time he calls he can’t speak, and he lays there and breathes and so does Neil.

Finally Andrew gets up and smokes a cigarette with the window open, listening to the traffic that is slowly becoming familiar and feeling the air on his face.

The next morning there is a text message from Neil -- _call Bee._

Three years ago maybe he wouldn’t have done it. But now, he does.

***

Of course Neil is there when the next one happens, and that means the knife is not under his pillow but in a drawer next to his bed.

Neil blinks and runs a hand through his hair. He is bare-chested and there are marks there from where Andrew bit him, earlier, and he remembers Neil’s enthusiastic consent and the way he’d grabbed Andrew’s hair, pulling him closer and the _god, yeah,_ but that is not the only thing he remembers, it is just the only thing he remembers that really happened.

Andrew sits up and thinks about knives and late-night drives and cigarettes and the fact that he has figured out how to access the roof of his building even if he’s never done it. Neil will come with him, if Andrew wants company. Neil will nod and sleep on the couch without a word, if Andrew needs his space. Neil fits him like the bands he wears on his arms, Neil is both the knife that threatens and the knife that can hurt but no, Andrew doesn’t want knives, not anymore, Andrew just wants Neil.

So he closes his eyes and imagines the false memory like a filmstrip, sepia-toned and coming unspooled, falling to pieces until there is nothing but a cool, blank white screen. On that he projects the truth in warm, bright colors and perfect definition like a fucking Blu-ray.

Neil’s body beneath his, Neil’s low laugh in his ear, Neil’s hands running over and over the muscles of Andrew’s upper back and his shoulders, honed from years of playing goalie. Neil has always loved touching him there, even since the first time Andrew allowed it.

Neil has always treated Andrew’s hard-won permission to touch like a gift. Andrew thinks about that, imagines it like closed captions across the screen of actual memory. He opens his eyes.

“Okay?” Neil asks, and it’s code for _what do you need_ and Andrew knows that, knows Neil will get up and pull on sweatpants and a t-shirt and follow him to the car, the roof, or the couch in the living room if that is what Andrew needs. They follow each other and it’s not the first time Andrew has believed the _always_ but it is certainly welcome.

Andrew lays back down and moves closer so that he is pressed up against Neil’s back with his face tucked into the space between Neil’s neck and shoulder, one hand under his pillow and the other resting hummingbird-light on Neil’s hip. He can feel the surprise in the tension running through Neil’s body, which eventually relaxes as Andrew lays there against him and breathes.

“Don’t say anything,” Andrew says pre-emptively, as if that’s even a possibility when it comes to Neil.

“I wasn’t going to,” Neil says, and oh, that is a lie. He can hear the smile in Neil’s voice when he says, “This is nice, that’s all.”

Andrew rolls his eyes, refusing to admit that’s what he wanted to hear all along.

***

Neil goes back to PSU and the Foxes, and Andrew is alone again in his apartment with the now-familiar traffic and the silence he’s come to appreciate.

Andrew wears his bands to practice, but he leaves his knives at home.

v. home

Neil is finishing up his call with Kevin when he sees one of the cats, King, batting something across the hardwood floor that looks suspiciously like his mouth guard.

“Hey,” says Neil, shoving his phone in his pocket and taking a step toward the cat. “King. That’s not yours.”

King looks at him, picks up the mouthguard, and runs into the living room.

Neil follows the streaking ball of fluff into the living room, where Andrew is reading a book on the couch.

“The cat has my mouthguard,” he says, at Andrew’s look. He’s long accustomed to answering questions Andrew doesn’t ask. It is a habit their teammates find mystifying, since most of them never hear Andrew say much of anything.

“Well,” Andrew says, turning a page in that way he does to make it obvious he doesn’t care what Neil is telling him, “now you know how it feels for the rest of us.”

“Huh?”

Andrew’s gaze regards him steadily from behind the reading glasses he refuses to admit he needs. “Watching your mouth run away from you,” he says, and goes back at his book.

Neil stares at him in stunned silence. “Did you just make a joke?”

Andrew does not make jokes. Andrew makes Neil laugh but it’s usually not on purpose, or it’s admittedly something other people would consider mean.

“What about that do you think is a joke, Neil?”

Neil is still staring at him, and Andrew nudges the cat with his foot, almost like he’s petting Sir instead of convincing him to give up Neil’s mouthguard. Not that Neil wants it back at this point.

There’s an Exy game on the television, but Andrew muted it the second Neil took Kevin’s call. There’s a mug of coffee on the table, and an empty package of candy next to it.  

Andrew looks the same as ever, blond and serious with maybe a few more lines around his eyes, and he never smiles and still has nights he can’t sleep in the bed with Neil. Andrew Minyard, who’s made almost as many enemies as Neil on the Exy court even though he speaks 95% less of the time. Andrew, who pretends he doesn’t like their cats and knows how Neil likes his coffee and his eggs. Andrew, who hates when Neil leaves wet towels on the floor and is always cold despite being made entirely of muscles and disdain.  

They have a life together, fought for in blood and sweat and tears, and for some reason all it takes is Andrew making one comment that may or may not have been intended as humorous for Neil to realize in stunning clarity just how much it would hurt to lose it.

That’s the moment Neil realizes you don’t have to be asleep to have a nightmare. Suddenly he realizes how stupid it is to think that the only thing that might take Andrew away from him is a crime family who doesn’t care that much about him, or men who probably found some other psychopath to serve.

“Neil,” Andrew says, because of course he knows from Neil’s stillness, his breathing, that he is like a runner on a starting block just waiting for the sound of the gun. And that’s it, that’s the final support beam that collapses and makes Neil stumble backward and nearly trip over the other cat because _how did he think there wouldn’t come a time when he would lose this because of course he will, it might not end in bloodshed and death but it. will. end._

That thought is the gunshot he’s been waiting for. Neil grabs his keys and runs.

***

He finally stops driving in some small town in Missouri, hours away from home, the familiar skyline and suburbs of Chicago fading into corn fields and small white houses set far back from the road.

Neil pulls his car into a hotel off the highway. His phone is on the seat next to him. It rang three times while he was driving, and there’s a notification that he has no voice mails and two new text messages.

In the hotel room he takes a shower, then cranks up the air conditioner until it’s freezing and too loud for him to think. He’s dressed in his underwear and a t-shirt and he sits on the edge of the bed and stares at his phone.

Andrew called and didn’t leave a message, but he sent two text messages.

The first –

_I won’t be like them. I won’t let you let me be._

And the second --

_Yes or no?_

Neil knows what Andrew is asking, and it isn’t about traversing the delicate minefield of intimacy like when they were in college. It is about Andrew not being Nathan Wesninski or Mary Hartford. It is about Andrew letting Neil go, if that is what Neil wants.

The ache in his chest eases and Neil presses _call,_ feeling tired and stupid and shaken.

“Once a runner,” says Andrew, when he answers.

“Yes,” says Neil, and before Andrew can ask if that’s simply Neil agreeing to the statement he says, “Always yes with you,” and gives Andrew the address.

Andrew hangs up without a word.

***

Andrew shows up shortly after dawn, clearly having driven all night. He scowls and pushes his way into Neil’s room, and he’s wearing an old Palmetto State t-shirt that is too tight across the shoulders and sweatpants with cuffs that are dragging on the ground, though that does not necessarily mean they are Neil’s.

Neil’s throat is tight and he watches Andrew walk over and turn down the air, which by now has turned the room frigid.

“You said yes,” Andrew says without preamble. “If you didn’t mean it, I will kill you.”

It’s been a long time since Andrew’s said that and Neil’s believed him. But if Neil lied and told him to come when Neil didn’t want to be caught, that will be the end of it. A bridge not so much burned as vaporized into nothing, not even ash. There would be no coming back from this.

Neil is shaking all over but he says, “I meant it.”

“It isn’t easy for me, either.”

Neil blinks. They are still standing across the room from each other, like armies waiting for the sign to charge. “What?”

“This,” Andrew says, waving his hand between the two of them. “It’s never been easy. It never gets easier. It gets worse the more it matters.”

Unbelievably, Neil’s mouth quirks. In all these years it’s the first time Andrew’s ever acknowledged in words that _this_ was a thing at all. He’s acknowledged it in a thousand other ways – hanging up the towels Neil leaves around, feeding the cats – but not out loud. Neil assumes that’s just stubbornness. “Yeah.”

“You are the worst idea I’ve ever had,” says Andrew, as serious as he ever is.  “I still hate you. Maybe more than ever. What the fuck are we doing here?”

Neil is so weak with relief that he can’t think, his thoughts shutting down all at once like a breaker switch has flipped. He sits heavily on the bed, shivering even though the room isn’t the approximate temperature of an iceberg.

He shakes his head – _I can’t tell you, not yet –_ and crawls up on the bed. His head hurts, he’s hungry and he still doesn’t know how to make peace with the fact that one day this will end.

Andrew sits on the chair next to the bed, takes out his book and starts to read.

***

Andrew pretends to read until Neil’s shaky breathing has evened out, and he’s sure that exhaustion has finally won out and dragged him into sleep.

Then he puts the book down, slips outside and calls Renee.

“I found him.”

Renee makes a soft noise. “I figured you would. How is he?”

Andrew’s mouth twists. “He’s fine.”

Renee’s laugh is a strange combination of sorrowful and amused that Andrew recognizes all too fucking well. “And do you believe him?”

“Do I ever believe him?”

“Yes,” she says, very quietly. “You wouldn’t be there if you didn’t.”

Andrew hangs up on her, but his hands are steadier than they were when he left. He smokes two cigarettes, digs some change out of his jeans pocket and the console of the Maserati and Neil’s Jag, then goes and buys some snacks at the vending machine.

He texts the one teammate he doesn’t hate, a former Raven backliner, and asks him to feed the fucking cats.

Then he goes back inside and sits in the dark, waiting for Neil to wake up.

***

Neil doesn’t say much, and neither of them mention leaving. Andrew calls the front desk of the hotel and tells them to charge another night to the room. He hates talking to people he doesn’t know, and when Neil tries to say he’s sorry Andrew glares at him until he shuts up.

Neil lays on the bed and every time he tries to speak, he meets Andrew’s eyes and can’t do it.

Andrew reads his book, eats his snacks, and waits for Neil to talk to him. He has many qualities that toe the line between bad and deplorable, but patience is one of the good ones.

“I’m happy,” Neil says, finally. “That’s why I ran. I’m happy and…I finally feel safe because my father is dead and Moriyama is pleased enough with me and my career to leave me alone. And for some stupid, stupid reason I thought that meant I was safe. That _we_ were safe. But we’re not, are we? We’re _happy,_ ” he snarls, like it’s a curse, and that at least Andrew can appreciate. “And that means we’re never safe.”

Andrew shrugs. He’s known that for years now, and he doesn’t believe for one second that this is the first Neil’s realized that happiness is dangerous when it is tied so inexorably to someone else. “Life isn’t safe, Neil. The world is dangerous for everybody.” He pauses. “More so for you, but that’s your own fault.”

Neil rolls over and blinks those cool blue eyes at him. The scars on his face pull with his slight smile. “I guess that’s true.”

Andrew doesn’t know what to say. Dealing with an existential crisis is not his forte. “We are not guaranteed forever, Neil.”

“I know.” Neil sits up and sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I guess it just never occurred to me there were other things to worry about that could fuck this up. You know. That weren’t the yakuza and my father’s criminal associates carrying a grudge.”

Andrew stares at him. He hasn’t laughed in years but this might be the closest he’s come since he went off the drugs, and the worst part of it is he knows Neil isn’t joking. “Jesus _Christ,_ you are still a mess and always will be.”

Neil swings his legs over the bed and nods. “Yeah. I guess all you can hope for is that I die first so you get some peace and quiet.”

“Somehow I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Andrew says darkly. “Murder magnet that you are.”

“You eat too much ice cream,” Neil retorts, stretching. “You’re wearing my clothes.”

“You are at too high a percentage to make comments about my clothing,” says Andrew, even though that is true. He stands up and places the book he wasn’t really reading on the bedside table.  

“My clothing, you mean,” says Neil, as Andrew moves next to the bed until Neil widens his legs and takes Andrew’s proximity as the invitation it is, hands settling on Andrew’s hips to pull him closer. He presses his face into Andrew’s stomach, and Andrew can feel the warmth of Neil’s breath through the thin t-shirt as he sighs.

Andrew draws his hand through Neil’s hair, the other settling on the back of Neil’s neck.

Neil peeks up at him. “Your hands are shaking.”

It was too much to hope he hadn’t noticed. “I’m tired of having emotional confrontations with you in motels. We have a perfectly good house to do this in, you know.”

“You don’t want to have emotional confrontations there, either,” Neil reminds him, as if _he_ does. “And I think this is technically considered a hotel.”

Andrew tugs his hair, hard. “Not in the mood, Josten,” he says. “Not in the mood.”

They fall asleep on the bed, limbs and issues and everything they are all tangled together, just like they should be.

  



End file.
